Gateway students will be housed in portable classrooms until its campus on U.S. Highway 192-441 east of Kissimmee opens to about 500 freshmen and sophomores in January 1986.

For its inaugural 1985 athletic season, Gateway has been designated a Class A school by the Florida High School Athletic Association. Class A schools have fewer than 211 students enrolled in grades 10 through 12.

The school will add 11th-grade students for 1986-87, graduating its first senior class in 1988.

The association will adjust Gateway's status based on student enrollments. At Gateway, Eppinette, 36, will be athletic director and will coach boys' cross country, boys' track and assist in varsity boys' basketball. In the classroom, he will teach social studies.

Brown, 33, is the Panthers' assistant coach for football and baseball and will teach science.

Eppinette coached at Clermont for nine years, serving the last three as athletic director, and was the basketball coach five years, compiling an 81-50 record, including two district titles.

As track coach, Eppinette's record is 520-56, including seven consecutive district championships.

Forty-one Eppinette-coached Highlanders have earned all-state honors in track. Five more have garnered all-state honors.

''He (Eppinette) had such an excellent record there,'' said Gateway principal Dorothy Davis. ''His references and credentials were impeccable. We feel very fortunate to be getting him as coach, athletic director and teacher.''

Davis said other candidates for the athletic director's position included Osceola High coaches Tom Booth, Bill Tillema and Ed Kershner.

Brown, who has worked as baseball and football coach for two years, was 10-10 in football and 28-17 in baseball.

''We're losing two quality people,'' David Coggshall, Clermont's principal, said. ''We hope we will continue to have a strong program. We will work hard to have a strong program.''

''This is an opportunity to go to a school that's growing,'' Eppinette said. ''We will only have freshmen and sophomores the first year, but I feel if we give them good coaching, by the time they are seniors, they should be pretty good.''

Eppinette and Brown said their decisions to leave Clermont were made independently, but each said he was glad the other is going.

''One of my considerations is that I knew he (Eppinette) was going to be the athletic director and that let me know how the program will be run,'' Brown said. ''It's not a good move for me professionally (going to an assistant's position), but it is a move that I am making for personal reasons.''

''To me, after you've been in one place for a long period of time, you get kind of set in your ways,'' Eppinette said. ''By going some place else, I hope to make some positive changes in my coaching abilities.''